The Year She Disappeared

by Ann Harleman

  Gabriel.

  What didn’t I know, and when didn’t I know it?

  Not that Nixon, in Nan Mulholland’s far from humble opinion, had ever known much of anything. More than Reagan, though, even before the revelation of Alzheimer’s. She’d met Reagan once, their palms sparking briefly, at a reception in Warsaw during the pre-revelation years of nodding affability. Wasn’t it shortly after that that she’d misread, with delight, the headline SURGEONS REMOVE FLUFF FROM REAGAN’S BRAIN?

  Stick to the subject.

  Tod had often found it necessary to excuse his wife’s proclivity for glossing things over. “Remembering,” he used to say, “means selecting the things that we can bear and letting them crowd out the things we can’t. Memory isn’t about remembering. It’s about forgetting.” Here in her own place, alone, listening to the birds celebrate the mild morning, it was easy to dismiss what she had seen, what Alex had seen. Yet easy, too, to give it too much meaning? Alex’s desperation had been real; she truly believed what she’d told Nan; but was her belief well founded? Nan simply didn’t know. Her last glimpse of Gabriel had shown her only a middle-aged man tired from the morning’s surgery, his daughter’s lunch box in one hand, turning away to scan the day’s mail.

  One thing, though, was clear. Nan stubbed out her cigarette, rose, went to the phone. Gabriel—a man who stopped at nothing to repossess what he might have lost—would be a formidable antagonist. He had power, connections, a sterling reputation; above all, he had passion.

  Jane was his passion.

  Three

  When their plane landed at La Guardia, Nan and Jane took a shuttle to the Port Authority in Manhattan, where they just managed to catch the last bus to Providence. (First Nan bought two tickets to Baltimore at the Greyhound window, asking a lot of loud questions and pretending to throw up.) The bus line that went to Providence was called Bonanza, which Nan, settling the two of them near the back, out of range of the driver’s rearview mirror, took as a good omen. Jane snuggled into her seat, one arm clutching Squirrel, the other tucked into Nan’s. The huge, loud, neon-scribbled expanse of the Port Authority seemed to have made her realize how far from home they really were. Her spirits rising—maybe this trip could after all be seen as an adventure?—Nan gave Jane one of the Kit Kat bars she’d managed to buy before they boarded, and took the other herself. They ate them, as always, the same way, breaking off a stick at a time, making three bites of each stick.

  By Bridgeport Jane was asleep. The cheek she turned toward Nan was still printed faintly with the fleur-de-lis of the airplane upholstery. Nan smoothed the thick horsetail hair. Everything (her spirits rose further) had gone smoothly. She checked her watch, set now to East Coast time—nearly eleven fifteen—then snapped off her overhead light and leaned back in the high seat. Behind her came the intermittent sound of a child’s cough, voices rising and falling in Spanish. About three hours to their destination, now. She’d chosen Providence because her oldest friend in the world had just moved there, and—truly providential!—she hadn’t mentioned this fact to Alex and Gabe. Deenie. Geraldine Tice, her name had been, until marriage had unfortunately changed it to Geraldine Horsfal. Her last letter, three weeks ago, had had her maiden name written above the new return address—a senior moment, Nan supposed. Tice, she whispered to the darkened, orange-and-urinescented bus—and that one syllable brought Deenie back. They’d found each other in assembly the first day of freshman year, two scholarship girls from the heart (not the “inner city” then) of Philly, both tall for their age, both lost. Nan was thirteen; Deenie, fourteen. They’d been what Nan’s father used to call “close as close” ever since. (Hey, Two Peas! he’d yell up the stairs. Dinner’s ready!) In nearly half a century, and often separated by half a world, they’d never lost touch.

  There’d been no time to call Deenie from the Port Authority. But she would have heard the messages Nan had left on her recorder yesterday and again this morning. By now she’d have made up the bed where Nan had slept five years ago, when she’d visited her in Chicago after Tod died. A vase of fresh flowers on the nightstand, and a bottle of spring water. A lavender sachet under each pillow. Sleepy now, her head falling back against the little paper bus pillow, Nan thought, Deenie will take care of me. Of us. Quick, warm Deenie. Two seats ahead of her a man began to snore: that once-maddening, now nostalgic sound. Nan thought of Tod, then of Deenie again; then, lulled by the bus’s ponderous, rolling rhythm, of nothing at all.

  |

  “You got lucky, lady,” the taxi driver said, engaging Nan’s reluctant eyes in his rearview mirror. “You and your daughter. You got the last white cabbie in Providence. I’m on the endangered species list. Ha-ha!”

  Jane leaned forward. “I’m not her daughter,” she said, in a pleased voice. She loved having useful information to impart to grown-ups. “I’m her granddaughter.”

  “Shhh!” Nan pulled her back, held her firmly across the shoulders.

  Jane squirmed. “Nana! Don’t!”

  “Be quiet!” Nan whispered, so fiercely that Jane subsided. Nan could feel her surprise: her beloved Nana never got mad at her. Her beloved Nana liked her to be full of facts.

  Evading the taxi driver’s mirrored eyes, Nan worried. Once again they’d made themselves conspicuous, but this time she hadn’t wanted to. Would he remember them? Remember their (genuine, this time) destination?

  Nan sighed. If so, there was nothing she could do about it. Asking to be taken back to the bus terminal would make them even more memorable. And anyway, this had been the last cab in the deserted plaza when the bus pulled up in Providence. She and Jane had beat out a pale, baleful-looking priest for it—Nan feeling a flash of the same surprised fierceness she’d so often felt when Alex was little: how ruthless you could be when a child’s safety was at stake. The unheated cab smelled of Juicy Fruit and old cigars. Nan buttoned the top button of her coat and turned up the collar: she’d forgotten Northeast Decembers. Then she zipped up Jane’s too-thin Seattle-weight parka and put one arm around her and pulled her close. Jane, resigned and silent, huddled into Nan’s armpit. Why hadn’t she asked where they were going? Jane, usually so curious, so watchful. Had Alex told her not to ask? Or was docility in strange circumstances a characteristic of sexually abused children? Which you know nothing about, Nan reminded herself. To still her rising panic, she snatched at her mantra. Remember the Plan.

  It was two in the morning. A poor time for houseguests to arrive, but Deenie would be expecting them. They swept along empty city streets, through darkness that could have been anywhere, until they passed a large white theatrically lighted dome. “State House,” the driver tossed over his shoulder. It wore a ring of white Christmas lights, like blurred pearls in the foggy cold.

  Jane began to kick the back of the driver’s seat.

  “We’re almost there,” Nan said. “Not long now.”

  “Where ya’s from?” the driver asked.

  “Virginia.” The lie came easily, almost automatically.

  “Yeah? Ya don’t sound it.”

  Jane said, “Actually, we’re not from there. We’re from— Nana! Ow!”

  Nan loosened her hold on Jane and put her lips close to Jane’s ear. “Be! Quiet!” she said, in a soft but (she hoped) sufficiently menacing voice. Jane pulled away, stiff with fury. Dismayed and fearful, but unable to think what else to do, Nan let her be.

  “Now me,” continued the driver, as if he’d noticed nothing unusual, “I’m from New York originally. The Bronx. I hadda get out, know what I’m sayin’? Helluva town, Manhattan. But the Bronx, that is hell. Pardon my English.”

  Jane kicked harder. They were on a cobblestone street now, the cab bouncing rhythmically. Suddenly it swerved. Of its own accord, Nan’s arm shot out to hold Jane in her seat. The cab slammed to a stop.

  We’ve been followed.

  Nan twisted around, still holding on to Jane. A bulky figure pushing a shopping cart trundled past her window and crossed in front of the ca
b.

  “It’s shame on them if they get nailed,” the cabbie said. “Hey, that’s what ya got insurance for, am I right?”

  “Nana!” Jane said. “Ow!”

  Trembling with relief, Nan released her. She gripped the back of the seat and pulled herself upright. “Now sit still!” she whispered.

  “This here’s the river they’re putting back,” the driver said, waving an unlit cigar. “Used to be all paved over. See how they’re building those little curved bridges, for walking? Now the mayor’s callin’ Providence the Venice of the Northeast.”

  Nan’s hands were so cold her knuckles ached. She couldn’t find her gloves—must have left them on the bus—so she tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves of her coat the way the nuns at the Academy used to do. Her earlier sense of adventure had completely evaporated. All she wanted now was to be enfolded by Deenie, relieved of her suitcase, tucked between warm flannel sheets.

  The driver found Benefit Street and had their one suitcase out on the brick pavement in front of number 215 before Nan had finished calculating the tip. A narrow frame house, attached on either side to other narrow frame houses, it rose abruptly from the pavement, unsoftened by grass or shrubs. No lights in any of the windows. The driver insisted on waiting until they got inside. Nan went up the steps, holding tight to Jane’s hand, and lifted the brass knocker and let it fall. Waiting, she saw a match flare inside the cab; its engine was the only sound on the deserted street. A cold, fog-laden breeze licked her face. She let the knocker fall again, heavily, twice.

  Nothing.

  Maybe Deenie’s left the door unlocked for us and gone to bed?

  But when she tried the knob, it didn’t turn. She banged on the door with her fist. Beside her, Jane seized the skirt of her coat. Nan put one arm around her and continued to assault the door. No answering lights came on; no sound of eager approaching footsteps. Twisting the cloth of Nan’s coat, Jane began to cry, not loudly but a soft, dry, hopeless sound.

  Oh, no, Nan thought. No! The single syllable filled her head, no room now for hopes, for plans, just the sound of her fist, over and over, against the cold unyielding wood.

  |

  The next day, Thursday, after phoning three times and getting Deenie’s recorder, she knew she had to go back.

  She hesitated, worried about taking Jane there. Already, not even twenty-four hours into this trip, she’d come up against the stark realization of the single parent: she would not ever be alone. A child of four could not be left, would be with her everywhere, every hour of the day, waking and sleeping—a new experience for Nan Mulholland. Life in the Foreign Service had always included built-in child care: a long line of women, au pairs and bambinaias and panis—the name changed with the country—whom she’d come to think of, collectively, as The Nannies.

  She sat down in a shaft of morning sunlight in the Frederick’s little down-at-heel lobby—the kindly taxi driver had taken them, at two thirty in the morning, to a shabby residential hotel owned by his cousin—and tried to come up with a plan. In the corner by the counter Jane was building what looked like a castle out of Legos provided by the hotelkeeper’s wife, a wide, smiling woman who seemed to speak only Spanish. Nan had dressed Jane that morning in clean clothes, a yellow turtleneck and jeans, and wrestled her horsetail hair into the French braids Jane had demanded. Now Jane examined each Lego thoughtfully, keeping some and discarding others, her small face rapt. For the first time since their journey began, she looked the way a child should look. More than anything, Nan wanted to hang on to that. Besides, there was the question of what she might find at Deenie’s. Clearly something had gone wrong. Tired from the long night of traveling, Nan fought the urge to bury her face in her hands and weep. What should she do? What could she do?

  Jane herself solved the problem. When at last Nan rose and went over and held out her hand, saying with false cheerfulness, “Time to go, Grape Eyes,” Jane threw herself onto the floor, forehead to the dirty olive tile, small bottom up in the air. Her old baby posture of outrage. She would not leave her Princess House. She would not go back to the Spook House. The hotelkeeper’s wife, moved by such passion, offered to keep Jane with her; and Jane, her face smoothing out instantly, begged Nan to say yes.

  She looks kind, this Consuelo. And we need her.

  For a bleak moment Nan’s mind filled with images of all the refugees in all the countries she and Tod had lived in.

  We are the refugees now.

  She put one hand on the counter to steady herself. From now on, the kindness of strangers would, more and more, have to be relied on. Trusted.

  “All right”—Nan grasped for her baby Spanish— “Sí, gracias. Muchas gracias.”

  “Coca-Cola, querida?” Consuelo said, smiling down at Jane, who was already scrambling to her feet. “Lo quieres?”

  Nan bent down and hugged her. “A runcible cat!” she whispered into her ear. But Jane didn’t answer. She put her hand into Consuelo’s, shooting a sidelong glance at Nan. See? said that look, so like her mother’s. I’d rather be with her.

  Nan watched her granddaughter follow Consuelo’s bulky, slow-moving figure down the hall to the kitchen (“Está aquí!” “Here?” “Sí, aquí!”). Would Jane remember to say nothing about where they’d come from? Would she remember their alias? Nan had chosen “Tice” when they’d registered the night before; she and Jane had practiced at breakfast at a nearby Burger King. Consuelo’s lack of English protected them somewhat; but Jane, too, would have to be trusted. There was no alternative.

  Outside, in the cold blue morning, Nan felt free and light. She walked to the corner and caught the number 32 bus to the East Side, as instructed by Consuelo. When it stopped at the corner of College and Benefit, she got off and walked the two short blocks to Deenie’s place. Again there was no answer to the knocker’s clank, or to Nan’s knuckles on the green-painted door. But this time when she tried the doorknob, it turned. Her stomach lurched. She pushed, and the door swung inward.

  “Deenie?” she called through the narrow opening. Then, louder, “Deen? You there?”

  There was no answer.

  Nan hesitated on the step. Why was the door unlocked now, and not last night? Or had she been mistaken—it had been so late, and she’d been so tired, so worried that the cabdriver might get suspicious. The sun warmed the top of her head; deep breaths of frost-filled air made her heart bob. Yes; no; yes. What made her think she even had a choice?

  A quick look up and down the street revealed no one except a lone dog walker whose back was turned. Nan slipped through the opening and found herself in a small foyer. Closing the door behind her, she stood still, unable to see, the bright day printed in spangled afterimages on the blackness. The space in which she stood felt stuffy and sealed off. She could smell the cindery odor of soot, the ghosts of old spices, a touch of mildew. She moved forward slowly, hands out, until she touched cool wood, a glass doorknob. It turned.

  Here, in whatever room it was, the darkness was less absolute. There was an odd sound, a sort of clucking, not rhythmic enough for a clock. Ahead of her, at the other end of the room, fingernail lines of daylight suggested windows. As she moved cautiously toward the light, chairs, a low table, a sofa made themselves known to her knees. At last she felt along the sills for the window shades, snapped one up. Bright sunshine fell over her. Behind her the clucking sound multiplied and grew louder. Turning, she saw a figure in a dark coat, uttered a little choked scream, then understood: it was herself, her own reflection in the mirror over the mantel. The fireplace was flanked on either side by a row of tall humped shapes, like giant eggs, in red corduroy shrouds. Legs wavering in relief, Nan sat down abruptly in a wing chair. How could she have forgotten Deenie’s birds?

  When she felt steady again, Nan took off her coat and put up the rest of the shades, sent them clattering to the top of the tall windows, flooding the room with light. Then she pulled the covers off all six birdcages. There was a great eruption, chirping and scol
ding, pinwheels of blue and yellow and green. Cheered by the commotion, Nan walked around the room, inspecting. Goldfish puttering in a bowl; a pot of mauve chrysanthemums on the hearth in front of the fireplace; propped on the mantel a framed, familiar newspaper clipping: CHICAGO WOMAN NAMED MS. SENIOR ILLINOIS; WAY TO GO, GERALDINE! above a dim Deenie in ball gown and tiara. The parakeets’ water dishes were nearly full, the goldfish bowl unclouded, the chrysanthemums’ soil, when Nan dug a finger into it, damp. Deenie couldn’t have been gone long. Maybe, Nan thought, she just went somewhere overnight. But where? There was a cousin she’d been close to, growing up; but he’d lived abroad for years.

  The mail (Nan was frankly snooping now) did seem like a lot. A stack of unaddressed Christmas cards—”Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men”—lay next to an uncapped pen on the pretty Empire writing desk.

  Deenie seemed to be in the middle of inserting “wo” before “men” on all of them. The pen no longer wrote. Nan put the cap back on anyway. If Deenie had gone away, where was she?

  A few feathers, like languid snowflakes, floated on the stale air and drifted slowly to the floor. The parakeets had settled into loud, steady chirping, a clear, virtuous sound. One of them ventured, “What’s up, Doc? Pretty boy!” Biting back a nervous giggle, Nan went back into the little foyer and opened the remaining doors. A closet: more mustiness, threaded with the heady smell of mothballs. Kitchen. Bathroom. The last door led to Deenie’s bedroom. The big pearwood canopy bed where Nan had slept on her visit to Chicago stood in the center of the room, sunlight falling across it through half-closed shutters. Nan could smell Deenie’s perfume, L’Air du Temps, unchanged since she was sixteen. (Attila the Nun bursting into the upper school lavatory—”What’s that I smell?”—and afterward, in detention, Deenie’s whispered joke: What’s black and white and can’t get into an elevator? A nun with a spear through her head.)